ESports seem to be gaining more mainstream attention every day, moving from simply broadcasting on Twitch to more mainstream channels like ESPN. So it should come as no surprise that TBS announced that it will air the Overwatch Open Grand Finals.
In a press release, ELeague, a new esports organization established in partnership between Turner, WME | IMG, and Faceit, will host a new $300,000 Overwatch tournament. Most of the tournament will take place on Twitch, while TBS will broadcast the finals alongside the Internet stream.
The online phase of the tournament will begin on July 23 and is limited to North America and Europe. The online rounds will lead to the playoffs, which will run during the weekend of August 26. The top eight teams from each region will then head to the finals. The two remaining teams will complete for top prize at Turner Studios’ ELeague Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Overwatch is an exciting new game with thrilling and expertly-balanced action that makes it perfect for competitive play,” said Michelle Attisani, Faceit’s Chief Business Officer. “We are confident that our capabilities as a platform and knowledge as a media partner will make this an exciting tournament for fans.”
The winning team will walk home with a $100,000 grand prize, while the rest of the $200,000 will be divvied up among the renaming finalists.
It’s a little unprecedented for a game as new as Overwatch to get television air time. Currently ELeague is running a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) tournament on TBS while ESPN2 recently aired the Street Fighter V Evolution Grand Finals. Both games have long histories with storied players and rivalries. Considering the breadth of longstanding competitive games out there, it’s odd that Overwatch, a game that’s been out for about two months, will find its way to living rooms later this year.
Granted, Overwatch has seen monumental success since launch. The game currently boasts over ten-million players, pointing to a very healthy competitive scene. It also seems that ELeague is planting its feet firmly with first-person shooters. We have yet to see traditional MOBA’s (massive online battle arena) get television time on Eleague. That being said, games like League of Legends or Dota 2 currently hold the most clout in terms of online viewership, and have found their way onto ESPN channels in less sponsored formats, like The International and Heroes of the Dorm.
It will be interesting to see how Overwatch does in terms of viewership when compared to CS:GO and Street Fighter V. ELeague’s CS:GO premiere week was promising, at a little over 500,000 viewers. ESPN2’s airing of Street Fighter V did respectable numbers as well, with about 200,000 viewers tuning in.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.